Thanks for the blurb...that's pretty cool. Don't take this the wrong way Peter, but you're just about the last person I had any intent of imitating. No offense. If you want to know who inspired me, it's the Laird Owens and Tom Emery and Gary Sobek and John Hughes and Dave Klages and Tom Prokop and Paul Rosales types out there (so many people to list, a few names will have to suffice here to represent the full crowd of true craftsmen). These are the guys with whom I daydreamed of flying in formation while I was cooped up, sweating in my garage, deburring and dimpling for hours. These are the guys who nonchalantly wiped my saliva off their RVs after I was around. All of those local fly-ins and informal gatherings here in SoCal over the past few years, events where I just couldn't take my eyes off the RVs -- where there would be Mustangs and T-6s and jets in the sky but I didn't care about them -- the RVs at those gatherings were the real source of inspiration, a model for success in my mind. From them I gleaned my own goals for my plane and a sense of workmanship and commitment to quality. It's those folks whom I have endeavored to resemble...and it's with them that I now feel fortunate enough to fly. Being among them as a flier, not just a builder, I am overcome with honor and pride.
They're also a bunch of friggin' bastards! Check out what they did to my plane yesterday at the Chino Fly-In!!! Just because I don't want to paint this thing yet, these jokers think they can go around with a red friggin' marker and label every little ding and dent. If this is a rite of passage then so be it...but watch out, you can pile a whole lot of rolls of toilet paper in the back of an RV-7. I'll be prepared at the next fly-in!
Bad rivet...yeah, you found it. What a joker.
Scratch, scratch...uh huh.
Dent. You guys are gonna get it...
WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE: If you can identify whose handwriting this is (and it's not YOU), then lunch is on me!